Motoya Nakamura/The Oregonian/2010Sometimes there is more happening outside Autzen Stadium than inside.

Oregon is a five-touchdown favorite over Fresno State on Saturday.

If the betting line is accurate, that means the game will have all the drama of, say, a political convention.

Which means fans who attend will be going as much for the party as for what happens between the lines.

That won't come as any shock to people who attend games at Autzen Stadium. I spent the last two years as a UO beat writer. It always was interesting to see how many fans didn't make it back to their seats for the second-half kickoff. Some didn't make it back at all.

Oregon isn't an exception in the college football world. And maybe absent fans have good reasons not to return.

All those television timeouts are perhaps necessary to sell products to television audiences so schools can have enough cash for state of the art weight rooms and seven-figure coaching salaries. But they sure slow down the game.

It's more obvious when you watch in person. It's not exactly compelling to sit in your stadium seat and wait and wait and wait for the go-ahead signal that telecast has returned from the commercial break.

Add to that instant replay, in which replay officials scrutinize any close play from several different angles to determine whether on-field officials made the correct call, and you get even more standing and waiting and waiting and waiting.

I hate replay reviews. Calls even out over the course of a game. I say, keep the action moving.

In the dark ages, when I first covered college football, games took three hours or less. Now, 3 1/2 hours is the rule.